If you are making changes only for the search engines and waiting for them to appear, you will drive yourself crazy trying to figure out why this or that happened when it did. There are a ton of factors you can’t control: algo changes, new competitors, changing competitors, server issues, even database issues where you may see different indexes from one day to the next in the search engines.
Changes That Make a Difference
Some changes do have a very real effect on your site. An example of some changes that may influence your rankings are:
Changes to page titles
Changes to body copy
Changes to navigational structure or internal linking
Any change that blocks or unblocks the spider’s access to the site such as:
Block or unblock robots.txt
Move to or away from search friendly URLs
Remove or add password protection
Changes to text in links or image links
New pages or new content on pages
Additional links from external sites
Impactful Changes Often Take Time
While the above activities can impact your rankings, you may not see an immediate reaction in the search listings.
If you are making changes only for the search engines and waiting for them to appear, you will drive yourself crazy trying to figure out why this or that happened when it did. There are a ton of factors you can’t control: algo changes, new competitors, changing competitors, server issues, even database issues where you may see different indexes from one day to the next in the search engines.
If you continue to improve your site, make search-friendly, focused changes to your site when needed (and not every week), gain quality incoming links and continue to build a better web experience for your visitors, long term rankings should be achievable. So don’t freak out if your #3 drops to a #12 every now and then… that’s just the nature of the game.